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Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

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Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#311

Post by akiselev »

dannyw wrote: post #226
slg wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That old reddit was also a haven for near child porn and other sorts of immoral or illicit content. Reddit needed strong moderation to become a functioning business and probably for the good of society as a whole. Maybe their current approach to moderation is overzealous, but let's not look at "old reddit" through rose-colored glasses.

There's a huge difference between banning jailbait and banning the Donald.

The subreddit was originally quarantined for threatening the lives of Oregon officials, no?

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#312

Post by uvnq »

xqyf wrote: post #153
andrewzah wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely has gotten much worse in the last few years. From Spez silent-editing users posts, to reddit employing an "Anti-Evil Operations team". I've been using reddit since ~2012.

They never recovered from the Diggification. So weird to remember it from 2010 and think that it would eventually host the_donald and other white supremacy subreddits that sealed its Eternal September.

The_donald wasn't white supremacist. When they moved to their own site they clamped down on that garbage pretty hard. I've seen anti-black or anti-jewish posts heavily downvoted with swathes of negative comments. I don't support everything they do, but empirically, that seems pretty out of character for a white supremacist forum

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#313

Post by irrational »

devwastaken wrote: post #296
pen2l wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets brought up a lot. And it's a bit of a doozy to make sense of. First, consider the context: the CEO (spez) was an easy punching bag on the_donald subreddit, in fact it was a bit of a meme there to attack reddit's admins (and those in the know do know that the attacks were often crossing a line, like accusing them of being pedophiles and things of the nature). The change that spez made was a bit of a joke its…

The problem isn't just that spez had an act of weakness - it's that reddits admin tools have built in features to modify comments. Meaning they're using that feature more than just this singular time.

Do we know for the a fact that those tools exist? I work on a website that has a database backend. It is trivially for me to go into the database and make any edits I want. How do we know that he doesn't have that kind of database access?

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#314

Post by bloopernova »

irrational wrote: post #300
prepend wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pretty insignifiant in the grand scheme of things. It was super significant in that it was evidence that Reddit employees have the ability to edit messages with no audit trail and no governance. So while the individual edit was not important, the fact that it happened was. And there is an unknown number of other edits that were never disclosed and is unprovable. So Reddit broke the one thing it’s supposed to do- al…

>that Reddit employees have the ability to edit messages with no audit trail and no governance. Help me understand this. Reddit is a private company. Is there some sort of contract somewhere that says they won't edit messages and will maintain an audit trail? I mean, I might not like that they are doing it, but I'm also not paying a dime for Reddit (and I have all ads blocked, so they doubly aren't making any money o…

The content of Reddit comments have been used in legal proceedings. It's a huge deal that the CEO has edit permissions in the main Reddit site database, they simply shouldn't have that access at all.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#315

Post by ok123456 »

Number157 wrote: post #169
testfoobar wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss humor and authenticity from old reddit the most. E.g. the classic: "I also choose this guy's dead wife." or the AMA with the vacuum repair guy. These days just about any popular thread that I wander into, I see wide swaths of "deleted" comments. I'm sure they were deleted for many good and valid reasons. IMHO, reddit's aggressive moderation suppresses spontaneous comments and is off putting to lurkers. The wit…

I've tried posting a few times but it just doesn't work. Absolutely everything is censored or sent to auto moderation immediately. And I'm not posting anything remotely controversial. E.g. one time I moved to a new place and wondered about banking in that location. Nope, can't post that. Even worse, messages look like they're posted when they're actually not visible. It's dishonest. They're orchestrating the conversa…

They also don't allow you to find posts that are beyond the last 1000 or so for that subreddit. Everything beyond that point gets memory holed. They've recreated the retention problem that usenet.

If you want to find older posts you have to use a search engine.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#316

Post by xenihn »

irrational wrote: post #300
prepend wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pretty insignifiant in the grand scheme of things. It was super significant in that it was evidence that Reddit employees have the ability to edit messages with no audit trail and no governance. So while the individual edit was not important, the fact that it happened was. And there is an unknown number of other edits that were never disclosed and is unprovable. So Reddit broke the one thing it’s supposed to do- al…

>that Reddit employees have the ability to edit messages with no audit trail and no governance. Help me understand this. Reddit is a private company. Is there some sort of contract somewhere that says they won't edit messages and will maintain an audit trail? I mean, I might not like that they are doing it, but I'm also not paying a dime for Reddit (and I have all ads blocked, so they doubly aren't making any money o…

You're missing the point. No one is saying that they're not legally allowed to do it. The issue here is that it's possible, and that it was done at least once.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#317

Post by camdenlock »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #52

Reddit has addressed the situation here, in a mealy mouthed sort of way: https://www.reddit.com/r/modsupport/comments/mbqgx2 However they seem to be denying the accusations that admins (possibly including the individual in question) were manually editing contents containing her name. This whole situation is incredibly bizarre to me. In the first place, why would reddit hire a 23 year old admin whose greatest accompli…

> why would reddit hire a 23 year old admin whose greatest accomplishment is being forced out of politics due to her connections to multiple pedophiles?

Hiring trans people gets you a lot of Virtue Credits. The incentives are clearly there.

It’s ridiculous, of course. And I say this as a trans person.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#318

Post by SamBam »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #231
esja wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but a minor nitpick: Aimee was forced out not just for being connected to pedophiles, but also for lying about and/or endorsing them (among other issues). A massive failure of safeguarding from the Greens and Lib Dems, and now from Reddit. It's astonishing to me that a person like this can become an admin on a website used by millions of teenagers. We already know that admins can access private messages and…

Normal rules of balance can be twisted or broken in this case, depending on your desired outcome. On the one hand, you've got the (reasonable) rule "always condemn and distance yourself from pedophilia". On the other hand, you've got the also reasonable rule "never discriminate against someone because of their gender". If the Greens, Lib Dems, Reddit, or anyone else involved had chosen not to hire her, she could stir…

What? This makes no sense. If you refuse to hire someone because of their (alleged, I have no idea) implicit support for pedophilia, it has nothing to do with refusing to hire someone because of their gender.

The fact that someone could pretend you aren't hiring them because of their gender is moot when you can simply point to the real reason you're not hiring them.

If I'm faced with the question of whether to hire an unrepentant serial killer, I'm not going to let their gender inform my decision. That's not "balance" in any way.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#319

Post by preordained »

Zeratoss wrote: post #284
lettergram wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is the ".win" community - https://patriots.win/ https://communities.win/ Which does have a more classic feel.

It certainly has a more bigoted feel.

That's part of being uncensored. Small price to pay, IMO

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#320

Post by irrational »

bloopernova wrote: post #314
irrational wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that Reddit employees have the ability to edit messages with no audit trail and no governance. Help me understand this. Reddit is a private company. Is there some sort of contract somewhere that says they won't edit messages and will maintain an audit trail? I mean, I might not like that they are doing it, but I'm also not paying a dime for Reddit (and I have all ads blocked, so they doubly aren't making any money o…

The content of Reddit comments have been used in legal proceedings. It's a huge deal that the CEO has edit permissions in the main Reddit site database, they simply shouldn't have that access at all.

The fact that Reddit comments are admissible in a court sounds insane to me. I can't believe people actually take Reddit that seriously. It's like taking preschoolers yelling at each other seriously, but with anonymity thrown in. The fact that adults can take it seriously enough to use it in court cases is crazy.
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